Apple Watch Faces and Complications

u/JonDavid82 asked me on Reddit “…do you have an Apple Watch? If so, which face(s) do you like to use and what are your favorite complications?”

The Watch

The available Apple Watch faces are horrendous. You can’t move the time from the spot that the face wants it in, and any face with even a small amount of functionality is ugly. Actually, even most of the ones that don’t have any functionality are ugly (I’m looking at you, Mickey). I live for the possibility that we may one day be able to install 3rd party watch faces.
I use my watch mostly as a reactive device, meaning I will rarely start anything there. Instead, I prefer to respond to notifications that are coming in or just glance at the complications on the face. Any actual heavy app use happens on my phone, and if I look at anything on my watch other than the face it’s an anomaly.

Here is my app layout. It’s not the most aesthetically pleasing, but I honestly never use any of these apps unless they send me a notification or they’re on the face:

The one exception to the statement above is the alarm clock. When I need an alarm for anything other than waking me up, I prefer the watch to the phone, so the bulk of my daily alarms (I have quite a few) are only on my watch.

The Faces

At Work

While I’m working I tend to use the Modular watch face. It can fit 5 complications plus the time, and while I hate how it looks, you can’t beat fitting the sheer amount of information from that many apps into such a small space. I use the color “Antique White” because it’s not too bright and isn’t distracting or too contrasty when viewed on the black background.

The applications you see are:

The stock timer app. I find myself timing things throughout the day, and I do it so often that I find it useful to have the timer on my watch face.

The stock date complication. Self Explanatory.

OmniFocus. An amazing to-do app that you can read about here. If you’re already an OmniFocus user and are interested in learning about how to make templates and automate things within the app, you can read about that here. The complication shows only the number of tasks that are left to be completed.

Fantastical. The main downside to this complication (I have the same issue with the app on the phone) is that unlock the calendar app, it doesn’t show you the date on the icon. So, unfortunately, I need both Fantastical and the date complications on my watch face. The reason I have this complication is that I like that it will tell me what my next event that day is, and just say “Free” if I don’t have any.

Carrot Weather. I like this app much more than the stock weather app because it shows me both the exact temperature and also an icon that gives me the weather at a glance.

At Home

All of the information above is very useful to me when I’m working. But when I’m trying to relax, it’s too cluttered. If I’m relaxing that means that I have nowhere to be, no tasks to complete, and I probably don’t need to time whatever episode of Brooklyn 99 I’m watching. So when I’m home after work or on the weekends I switch over to the X-Large watch face.

The only complication I have is the weather, since I’m relaxing and may want to go outside it’s nice to know what the weather is like, but past that I don’t need my watch much if I’m not at work.
I would love to see your watch faces and hear about how you use them! Comment below or tweet them to me @efficient_edu